Starring Akshay Kumar and Asin Thottumkal, “Khiladi 786” (Player 786) is the eighth film in the “Khiladi” series. The seventh movie released in 2000.

Mr. Kumar plays Bahattar, which is the number 72 in Hindi. His family are conmen who help the police nab smugglers and pocket some of the goods in the process. He is looking for a bride but no girl in the district wants to marry him. The story is how a failed matchmaker from Mumbai tries to arrange a marriage between Mr. Kumar and Ms. Thottumkal, who plays Indu Tendulkar, the daughter of a gangster.

Here’s a roundup of what critics had to say:

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A review by Kanika Sikka in Daily News and Analysis, called it a “mindless comedy.” She says it is a “typical masala film” but “fails to create an impact.”

She finds it is just another movie with the “clichéd cop image,” after “Dabangg,” that had Salman Khan in the lead role, “Singham” with Ajay Devgan and “Rowdy Rathore” also starring Mr. Kumar.

She is critical of Himmesh Reshammiya, who wrote the story and the music and plays the matchmaker in the film. The script “is a complex mix of innumerable films,” she writes.

She found that the film lacked good direction. “While there is enough action in the beginning and in the end,” Ashish R. Mohan, the director, “seems to get lost in the middle where he resorts to mindless comedy and not-so-funny jokes.”

For her, the dialogue is a “huge let down.” By the end of the movie you get “irritated with the number of characters and their cheesy dialogues,” she notes.

Nor was she impressed by the lead actors. Though Mr. Kumar “goes all out in this film,” she writes, “he fails to put up a convincing show.” She calls Ms. Thottumkal a “dolled-up beauty with hardly any role.”

But she was impressed by the other actors. She finds Mithun Chakraborty, who plays the role of a gangster in the film, “undoubtedly brilliant.” She says Raj Babbar and Mukesh Rishi, who play Mr. Kumar’s father and brother, respectively, “do justice” to their characters.

“The movie can only be fun if you leave your brains at home,” she concluded, giving the movie two stars out of five.

Shilpa Jamkhandikar in a review for Reuters, found the story and the acting in the movie “inconsistent,” adding that only a “20-minute stretch in the movie, when the families meet, will make you laugh.”

“Akshay Kumar in this film is akin to Akshay Kumar in all his recent films,” the review said.

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Asin Thottumkal and Akshay Kumar during a promotional event for “Khiladi 786″ in Mumbai, Nov. 27.

Critic Saibal Chatterjee found the movie “hopelessly mixed-up” and gave it one and half stars out of five.

“The comedy is crass, the acting borders on the slapstick, and the general air that hangs over the film is one of utter lunacy. The loudness is accentuated manifold by an ear-splitting background score,” he writes in a review on NDTV.

Madhureeta Mukherjee, in a review in TheTimes of India, said the movie is reminiscent of Rohit Shetty’s films. “There are flying cars, flying bodies, flying fists and a flying Singh too. He shows flair for comedy, but for a film titled Khiladi, it lacks hard-core action, heat and the adrenalin rush that is synonymous with Akshay’s Khiladiseries (maybe intentionally),” she adds.

Giving it three stars, she recommends the movie to people “looking for some logic-less laughtime, groovy tunes topped with some todh-podh.”

Reviewer Subhash K Jha is all praise for the film.

For him, “Khiladi786is the kind comic orgy done in shades of green, orange and pink, which doesn’t require us to strain our brain.”

In a review for the Indo-Asian News Service, he writes, “The script seems to be written by someone who loves Akshay’s humorous heroics and his emphatic but spoofy hijinks.”

He appreciated the movie’s music and writes that it is “splendidly in-sync with the film’s wacked-out mood.”

He likes both Mr. Kumar and Ms. Thottumkal in their respective roles. Though Mr. Kumar “doesn’t do anything here that he hasn’t done before,” he does it “in fun, with plenty of unzippered zest and a comforting absence of vulgarity.”

He concludes by asking readers to watch the movie and “have a blast.”

Have you seen this movie yet? Let us know what you thought in the Comments section.

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